


Five Times Tamina Used the Dagger of Time (And One Time She Didn't)

by hungrytiger



Category: Mythology - Fandom, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Mesopotamia, Misses Clause Challenge, Mythology - Freeform, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:15:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hungrytiger/pseuds/hungrytiger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her whole life has been crafted around the gods. Around the dagger, which belongs to the gods. Around the city and its temples that house the gods. Around the people who expect her to intercede on their behalf to the gods.</p><p> </p><p>And then there is this, in her life, now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Tamina Used the Dagger of Time (And One Time She Didn't)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [UEvangeline](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UEvangeline/gifts).



_Age 5_

 

Tamina’s skin itches. Up and down both her arms and oh, it is maddening. But she daren’t touch them. Painted signs asking for blessings from the gods had been drawn on. She’d had to sit and _sit_ for hours, but at the end everyone had petted her and told her what a Good Girl she’d been. Even though, she now remembers a little guilty, she’d wiggled that one time and the black ink on her shoulder had been smudged.

 

Funnily enough, even though everyone in the _whole world_ had seemingly been packed into her quarters earlier this morning fussing at her and over her, the palace was all but deserted now. This too was part of the festival day. They are celebrating the return of Tammuz, and his marriage to Ishtar, goddess of love. Ishtar is her favorite goddess because she has adventures and things. She’d even been to the land of the dead and returned. Of course, Tamina frowns, she’d had to send her husband to the underworld in her place, which isn’t very nice, but Tammuz gets to come back to earth every spring too because his sister goes in his place. It’s what the festival is all about. From lessons with the temple priests, she knows Tammuz is the one who makes the plants grow, but she isn’t allowed at the rituals themselves. How the god does this or why are still a bit of a mystery. What everyone else is doing at the temples is Too Grown-Up For You Little Princess Tamina. Tamina hates "Too Grown Up." She will be wanted in the feasting halls this evening, but for now, in the heat of the day, there is nothing to do.

 

Five is old enough to explore the palace on her own, she decides. There is, after all, no one to tell her not to. Well, there are the servants, she supposes, but they are all in the kitchens and she'll be back long before anyone wants her.

 

At first the halls she wanders are boring, familiar ones she traipse through every day. That way to the great hall, that way to the kitchens. If she turns down _that_ hall and goes through the door it will lead her to her own little garden she sometimes likes to play in.

 

But she doesn’t go that way. A side alcove is where the priests sometimes light incense and she darts through a door she has only ever seen them use- not even the servants go there. Then down a hall and another and then there’s a courtyard she’s never seen.

 

She could explore this way for hours.  Some of the doors are locked and some are not. There are stairs sometimes, some of which she climbs and some of which she does not.

 

What catches her eye, she cannot say. There is a hall with an open door to her right. There is a carved cabinet inside. She has looked in-not very many, but several- other cabinets today. Most have been boring things- nails, someone’s dinner knife- but she did see a woman’s necklace with a ruby the size of her thumbnail and bottles filled with something so smelly it might have been a magic potion.

 

Still, what draws her to this one, she cannot say. Her feet make no sound on the cool, hard floor. There are many columns; the room is surprisingly big, but there's not much furniture. The view, as every view the palace boasts, is beautiful. She can see much of the city and just barely discernable is the crowd near the temple. What they are doing she cannot tell. But she did not come into this place for the view. She turns her attention back to where it belongs.

 

Opening the cabinet door-which swings open on its hinges smoothly- is almost anticlimactic. No jewels like those she had seen before, or books, or potions, or even food. Just a knife, dagger like those palace guards carry with them. Except- her small hands reach up to grab it-something is different about this dagger. It’s blade curves and has squiggles she knows are words etched on them. She unhooks it from its keeping place and it falls, a heavy weight in her hand.

 

It has a funny handle too. Glass and inside it-

 

“Little girls shouldn’t take things that don’t belong them.”

 

Instinctively, Tamina hides her hands and what’s in them behind her.

 

“Ah- who are you?” she says, her voice high and little strained. It sounds funny to her ears and she wonders how long it has been since she last saw someone to talk to today.

 

“Jamapsa,” comes the answer a moment later, from the back of the room. Standing in the doorway, is a tall man with dark hair and in clothing Tamina vaguely recognizes as that of a man of the desert. How would such a man find his travels had brought him here?

 

Not that it matters. What matters is how much trouble she will be in. “Wandering off” the servants will call it. They have their own duties and hate that they’ve been saddled watching her again. And if they get in trouble from losing track of her, her own punishment at their hands will be that much worse.

 

 “Why are you here? Everyone’s supposed to be at the celebration!”

 

The man stares at her, a calculating look in his eye. After a moment the gaze shifts, as if he’s added her up and found her wanting.

 

“If everyone’s at the celebration, than why are you here?”

 

Tamina’s skin flushes. Stupid man! The handle of the knife slides down her sweat-slicked palms just a little. Not far but probably enough that the ink has smudged.

 

“Be-because everyone says it is Too Grown-Up, for adults only.”

 

“Hmmm,” the man agrees. “But if it is as you say, then not everyone is at your celebration.”

 

The overbearing lilt to his words has Tamina bristling and turns her embarrassment to anger. Some part of her suspects he knows just how grown up the “Too-Grown Up” rituals she’s been forbidden to attend are.

 

“You haven’t,” she tries in her best Royal Voice, “Answered me though. Why aren’t you at the celebration?”

 

“ Well, I wouldn’t be, since I don’t believe in your gods.”

 

“You don’t-“ Her hand slacks then tightens as the slick handle of the knife slips further down. She grips and- _something_ \- presses down and-

 

She’s standing back in the hall. To her right is an open door and inside that same cabinet, but it is now closed. The Man Who Does Not Believe (lair, some part of her shouts) is nowhere in sight.

 

She glances down at her hand. The ink has not been smudged, and there is no dagger in her hand.

 

It will be seven more years before she learns exactly how time has erased itself.

 

 

 

_Age 12_

At first, Jamaspa doesn’t want to teach her to fight.

 

“She plays with dolls,” he’d said as if dolls were the scourge of the world, or, even worse, something to _laugh_ at. It was as if he’d forgotten Ishtar was a goddess of war as well as love.

 

Jamaspa isn’t a follower of  The Goddess though. She always forgets. He abides by what the prophet Zoroaster had said these many centuries ago. It’s a wide world out there, she knows, but the gates of Alamut hem everything in so nicely, and everyone in Almut follows the old ways. They know gods have walked the earth, and might again. Even at just twelve she can sometimes feel their eyes upon her as she walks the halls of the palace. She represents them to the gods, they think. Let her walk with dignity and let her defend us to the gods. How odd, she sometimes thinks, that these people trust her with the gods when the gods do not even try to set people such as  Jamaspa straight.

 

What the priests and priestess told him she does not know, but  in the end some sort of barigan was made. The Unbeliever was hired to teach her the art of battle, and Tamina does not play with dolls anymore.

 

Despite her frustrations with her teacher’s stubbornly set beliefs, she still knows she got the better part of the deal. Jamaspa is a hard but fair teacher. Some days she learns with others, and some days he fights with her alone, but she always learns something And in the years since their first meeting (though he claims not to remember any such meeting), she has grown. Today it has been just her and her teacher, a rare treat, though a tiring one.

 

Sweat is dripping down her back, feeling icy against her flushed and heated skin. Muscles are stretched taunt along her bones, and breath does not come easy. She is just about to start her routines to ease and cool the body when Jamaspa calls out from behind her.

 

He carries a cloth, a dirty one, and Tamina feels a wrinkle form between her eyes as she stares at it. It should be nothing special and yet- a sense of urgency has the hairs on her arms raising though she was so hot a moment ago.

 

“This blade,” he tells her, “Find out what it can do.”

 

They will fight and some instinct or distant memory will tell her what to do, and it is to this moment she will return again.

 

 

 

_Age 14_

 

She fights with the knife often from then on, till it becomes a familiar weight in her hand. Till unwrapping it from its cloth or returning it to the ornately carved cabinet it lives in become a ritual as sacred to her as the festivals the temple priests have finally granted she is old enough to attend.

 

The first time she uses the dagger for something other than battle, she is just about to finish this particular ritual and shut the cabinet door. Fight practice has ended, and Jamaspa has even gone so far as to say she has nearly become as good as the young guards he trains beside her from time to time.

 

It has been satisfying, she admits, allowing herself a smirk, to throw Ninshubur to the ground, her dagger at his throat. She had not even needed the Sands of Time to allow herself a second chance. Ninshubur, a year or two older than she and the other boys they trained with, was generally considered the best fighter. Yet he always failed when fighting her. It is not even that he does not try. It puzzles her a bit, but Jamaspa refuses to share his thoughts on the matter, though she has sought out his opinion several times.  From time to time too, she has seen the moody young man around the palace grounds. He might be at the back of the great hall while the priests guide her as she takes petitions, or he’s there ready with a saddled horse when she wants to go riding, or even as she walks down a hall sometimes she’ll turn and see him there. He never says much beyond what is ordinary for the circumstances. He must want something, but what she is unclear to.

 

 

When questioned, the women servants cluck, the priests sigh, and her fellow students blush and say they cannot say, and Jamaspa-Jamaspa like people to make their own mistakes, she’s learned. But who was the one with a lesson to be learned here?

 

Light shifts. The barest flicker of shadows alert her, and she can feel someone behind. They are so close she can feel heat from the other person’s body, and the scent of sweat, both hers and theirs, permeates the air. When she turns it is Ninshubur she comes nose-to-chest-to.

 

“You startled me,” she says. He’s too close, but the frame of the open cabinet door is already pushing against her back; there’s no room. “What do you want, Ninsh-“

 

His mouth is on hers, and her mouth opens and then there is tongue and, _oh,_ that is what he wants. His hands eventually go to her arms and grip her there. When his mouth pulls away, his hands stay only a moment longer.

 

She stares, and thinks of what others have known all along.

 

“Tamina,” he says, both a question and claim.

 

She is no stranger to the acts of men and women. She has been to the festivals; she has heard the stories of the gods. The goddess Ishtar has been known to prowl the streets looking for men. But she thinks, Ishtar has been known to be a famously cruel lover, devouring men like so many candied figs.

 

The look in Ninshubur’s eyes is defiant and angry and so serious. So ready to defend his right to be in love.  Priestess and ruler and follower of the Morning Star she may be, but, in this one way, she cannot be like her favorite goddess.

 

She turns, takes the dagger from its place, and presses down on the handle. Ninshubur, familiar with the dagger from all their fights, raises a hand, but then this motion reverses itself. Back and back and back and-

 

Light shifts. The barest flicker of shadows alert her, and she can feel someone behind.

 

“No,” she says, her back still to the other presence in the room. She counts to ten before she turns, and when she does she finds herself alone.

 

 

 

_Age 18_

The room is crowded, choked with people. But the man, this Lion of Persia, this husband-to-be, pushes his way forward and in his hands, the dagger. All else shrinks away as she stares.

 

The hands are rough, the nails trimmed short and the skin is skin that has seen much sun. The dagger has a handle that would be curious if she were no so familiar with it.  It is glass and filled with sand.

 

A part of her mourns as she realizes that this dagger in any Persian’s hands means the one into whose hands she gave it is dead. Ninshubur, her loyal, serious captain of the guard has always resented her for not being able to love him as he has her since she was but a girl of fourteen. And now he is dead, most probably at the hands of her husband-to-be.

 

And the sand, there is less sand than there should be.

 

This husband-to-be is handsome, some distant part of her recognizes, brave, if as they said, he led the attack, and just, if as they said, his words were what gave her back her city.

 

There is a ringing in her ears and into this noise drops the prince’s words.

 

He has used the dagger, of that she is _almost_ sure.

 

She grips the glass handle, pulls the dagger away from him, it’s weight lighter in her hand than remembered.

 

Dastan. They’d said his name was Dastan.

 

 

 

 

_Age 19_

 

Tamina resists the urge to grind her teeth as she stares at her husband, Dastan. The man drives her mad. She thinks she might love him, but right now, he is driving her mad.

 

Dastan often drives her mad. Some of it is just Dastan- his tendency to ride off with only half the story and make grand pronouncements and save the day, when a steadier hand would have done just as well though there wouldn’t have been half the flair.  But, if the story he told her the day she first met him is true- and she believes it is true- than this is typical Dustan.

 

Still, that is not the only reason why these six months since their marriage have been hard. Her whole life has been crafted around the gods. Around the dagger, which belongs to the gods. Around the city and its temples that house the gods. Around the people who expect her to intercede on their behalf with the gods.

 

And then there is _this_ , in her life, now.

 

 His father is, she knows, considered a holy man. Though the King respects Alamut and its religion,  he follows the magi and the prophet Zoroaster as her teacher Jamaspa did. Dastan- she had _thought_ , but does not know.

 

And this conversation is not helping matters.

 

“You expect me to get up there and-and _be_ this god, this Tazi-“

 

“Tammuz,” she corrects, willing herself to be patient. “And you would not _be_ him- _represent_ him, _celebrate_ him-“

 

“By acting lik-like dogs in heat in front of the whole of Alamut-“

 

“ _Before, my lord Tammuz, I pour out plants from my womb_ ,” she interrupts him, quoting the sacred texts in a soft, but fierce voice. The god of fertility, dead these long winter months, now resurrected, and, in sacred ritual, married to the goddess of love, ensuring Alamut’s and all people’s prosperity continue. Can he not understand? He, who has what almost no man can claim to have- ultimate proof that the gods do exist- not then grasp that these same gods must have their rituals?

 

Her words have the desired effect, in that they stop Dastan talking. He looks at her, eyes dark and accusatory.

 

“My father is good at that too-quoting things. And he uses scriptures I’m much more familiar with and like better, Princess. The answer is the same: I will not lay with you in front of all our subjects. It is not right; I will not have it.”

 

She must change tactics.

 

“But you are their new ruler, my consort. Who else would the people accept to represent their king-god?-“

 

“Who was used before?” Dastan counters and stands, kicking the chair back. Tamina would like to kick _him_. He acts as though this was shameful, not creation, not rebirth and growth. Ishtar and Tammuz are reunited again; they must consummate their marriage and they must have people to use as their proxies. As he suggests, they could use others. Neither she nor he needs must be used, but the people _expect_ it to be her, their priestess-ruler, and Dastan, who now rules along side her. Is sleeping with her really so repulsive? She had not thought he felt that way before.

 

When his question goes unanswered, the silence takes on significance.

 

“You told me it was your goddess who casts this Tammuz into death in the first place. Like, her, I suppose any man can play stud-bull to your-“

 

He catches her hand before the nails can claw into his face. And it is only the way his fingers grind into the soft spot between the tendons of her wrist that stop her even then. He sighs, deflated, and does not resist when Tamina jerks back her arm. She should still hit him for what he said, for the insult to not just her but to Ishtar. She doesn’t though.

 

Dastan had grown up on the streets, he’d told her. He’d said that there you learned very quickly not care about anything too much because you would always lose it eventually. It is only those brotherly bonds,  that familial love he has grown to care too much about, he’d told her. She has become one of those people he cared too much about. He’d told her that too, the first night they’d made love.

 

They are too often exchanging words in heat, she sternly reminds herself. She loves- yes, she does- she loves this man. Why fight it, and him?

 

After a moment, he unstraps the dagger from his side. He nearly always carries it with him now. He sets it on the table, the glass making an audible sound. His words are not so heated now, merely weary.

 

“I have seen many things, but I am still not _sure-_ And my father. He is my father and my king too. Though he tolerates the many different religions under his empire, from me? He would not be well pleased. I can’t- you can’t ask me to choose who to make happy.”

 

Then he turns and walks out the door. The halls are echoingly loud and Tamina’s mind is whirling before his footsteps have even completely faded from hearing.  
  
Ishtar is goddess of love, of sensuality and her presence was what allowed life to continue. She should (and would be) revered. Yet, she is a careless goddess, Tamina can admit that in the privacy of her own mind. Ishtar is a goddess but also a woman so carelessly cruel as to cast her husband into death and find other company for her bed without another thought. It is, after all, only the great love and severe mourning of Tammuz’s sister that brings him back, however temporarily, from death.  
  
Tamina has never paid particular attention to Bellil the goddess of winter and sister of Tammuz. And yet perhaps it was time to imitate Bellil  more closely. She hates losing a fight, and her subjects expect- but But Bellil’s love, as Ishtar’s is, is a clearly a great thing. It is a love that thinks not of itself.

 

And there were, of course, other ways to celebrate. The gods make the Earth fruitful and likewise wish the people to be fruitful too. In the privacy of their own bed even Dastan, with his sometimes strange single god, could not object, could he?  
  
No, she reasons to herself, there is no reason for the night to end this way. She holds down the jeweled top of the dagger and watches time unravel around her.

 

 

 

 

 _Age 24_  
  
The child is young- no older than that long-ago girl who had pled to the gods for human life and held back the destroying sands. Yet, she is not so young she could not have brushed her own hair. Indeed, the child took after her father, and was _too_ contrary and independent at times.  
  
Yet Tamina takes up the brush and Aredetfredhi does not complain. It is an unlikely enough circumstance that as a mother, Tamina cannot help but smile. Aredetfredhi never acts half so well as when she is bribed to. Tonight is a festival. Though Tamina no longer plays a central role in the rituals, she still must go as priestess and ruler. But such rituals are too grown up for her little girl to attend, and though she is looking forward to time alone with her papa, Aredetfredhi had extracted a different promise from her. _Show me something special_ , she’d said.  
  
“Mama,” she says, only the slightest whine to indicate her impatience. “Mama, hurry. Show me. You said you had something to show me!”  
  
Tamina does not allow her hands to slow, nor to hurry. _Be my little girl,_ she wants to say. _Be my little girl for just a few minutes more_. But she is her father’s daughter and will not wait, but hurry on to her fate. A daughter of a righteous man, indeed.  
  
“It is good enough!” The whining note in the voice is strong and clear now as Tamina’s daughter reaches back a hand to grab her mother’s wrist. “ I look fine.”  
  
Yes, probably better than Tamina herself looked when she met her own fate while wandering the palace halls so many years ago. So- Tamina obliges her daughter. Though really, where did she learn such stubborn behavior? Not from Tamina, surely.  
  
“You know,” she says, opening a drawer, setting the brush inside, and taking out a dagger wrapped in cloth instead. “Of the day the gods nearly chose to wipe the race of men from the earth and start again?”  
  
Aredetfredhi looks up at her mother. It is a frightening story, at least, if like Tamina and Aredetfredhi, one believes by faith in the gods. Or if, as Dustan claims he has, one has seen their workings. In her face Aredetfredhi ages, becomes a creature more solemn than her five years of age should allow, and gently scoots to slide herself into her mother’s lap.  
  
“A girls asks them to spare everyone.”  
  
An imperfect recitation, but Tamina nods. “Yes, and all the sand they were going to use for a great sandstorm of destruction they captured again.”  
  
“They put it in a giant hourglass.”  
  
“Clever girl,” Tamina hugs her daughter. “Who told you?”  
  
“Papa.”  
  
“Ah,” Tamina should probably not feel as if her thunder has been stolen. Dastan had spent his life being one step ahead of his commanding officers, his brothers and his father. Why not his wife?  
  
“Yes,” she says. “Most of it, but not all. Some, of the sand is here.”  
  
She unwraps the dagger, arms on either side of Aredetfredhi nestled in her lap. For a moment Aredetfredhi merely looks at the unusual glass handle of the dagger- unusual but not so impressive as gold or silver might have been.  
  
“What does it do?” she asks and now- _oh_ , now they have come to the crux of the matter, but it is not destiny that takes Aredetfredhi’s hand. It is her mother.  
  
Wrapping her fingers around the little girl’s spindle-thin ones, Tamina helps her daughter to press down on the top of the dagger. Sand drifts out and the moment collapses, only to start again. 

**Author's Note:**

> Because of the historical setting and heavy use of mythology, I have provided several notes. 
> 
> The Prince of Persia- Sands of Time, takes place during the 6th century C.E. This would make the Persian Empire, as well as likely Dastan and his family, Zoroastrians. If there are any inaccuracies in how Zoroastrians or their religion are portrayed, the fault is the author's. 
> 
> No real myths or religions stumbled upon in research seemed to use a story of destroying sandstorms. That does not mean they do not exist. However, I chose to base the polytheistic religion Tamina references in the movie on Mesopotamian mythology, despite the fact the religion had largely died out by that time. This is because Alamut is roughly in Mesopotamia. I chose to use the Arkadian names of these gods, as opposed to their Babylonian ones because the Arkadian names are less old. Any inaccuracies are once again the author’s fault.
> 
> The gods (and myths) referenced are: 
> 
> • Tammuz (also called Dumzi)- a shepherd god of fertility, who sometimes is considered a King-God. 
> 
> • Ishtar (also called Inanna)- a goddess of love, sexuality, and war, she seems to play a prominent role in this mythology. It should be noted, that she is not a goddess of marriage though; she is known for her sexual appetites. She is also associated with the planet Venus, sometimes called the Morning Star. 
> 
> • Bellil- considered a goddess of winter and wine, she is the sister or Tammuz.
> 
> The main two myths mentioned in the story are the "Courtship of Innana and Dumzi" (this was written down as a poem not dissimilar to the biblical Songs of Solomon, and is where the quotation Tamina uses comes from), and the myth "Inanna's Descent into the Underworld." That myth is as follows:
> 
> Inanna/Ishtar goes to the underworld. At each gate she must go through, she is forced to remove a piece of clothing, until she arrives with nothing and it killed. For three days there is no growth or procreation on earth. Before she left Ishtar/Inanna had instructed her servant, Ninshubur, to go to her father for help if she was not back in three days. He goes and gets help. It is negotiated that Ishtar/Inanna may leave the world of the dead, but has to send someone back in her place. Demons go with to make sure her part of the bargain is upheld. They meet several people including her sons and her servant Ninshubur. But they have all been mourning her death and she cannot bear to send them. She returns to find her husband Tammuz/Dumzi has not been mourning her. She is so angry, she picks him to send to the underworld. 
> 
> He tries to escape, but eventually end ups in the Underworld. His sister, Bellil, is so upset, she begs to go in her brother's place. Ishtar/Inanna relents and says they can switch places every six months. So Tammuz/Dumzi is dead and in the underworld during the winter; Bellil is goddess of winter. Bellil is dead and in the underworld during the summer months while Tammuz/Dumzi, as a fertility and agricultural god helps things to grow. 
> 
> Though the gods involved use various names, a common ritual in the area was like the one described in the above story. A man (usually a king figure) would represent the newly resurrected agricultural god, and a woman (usually a priestess or temple prostitute) would represent the goddess of love and sexual fertility. They would publicly consumate the symbolic marriage of the two gods to ensure good crops. Often the crowd would follow their example and things would end with an orgy. 
> 
> The name of Dastan and Tamina's daughter Aredetfredhi is a Farsi name and supposedly means "daughter of a righteous man."


End file.
